By Herb Boyd and Autodidact 17 — There was an overflow crowd of supporters Saturday afternoon at the People’s Forum near Penn Station to hear a panel of speakers on an update on the condition of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Many were surprised to learn that Abu-Jamal, who has been behind bars since 1981, would be addressing them via telephone. Spectators were hardly in their seats when Mumia’s rich, sonorous…
By Herb Boyd, New York Amsterdam News — Back in September of last year, noted scholar and activist Angela Davis was to receive the prestigious Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights award at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s annual gala in February. Jan. 4, the BCRI caved in to pressure they say came from within and without to rescind its invitation, which has spurred an outrage from a number of community activists….
By Herb Boyd — “First you say you do/ Then you don’t. Then you say you will/Then you won’t/ You’re undecided now/ So what are you gonna do.” This indecision may work well in a popular song of yore, but it does little to end the 35 years former Black Panther and radio commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent behind bars. On Thursday a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge ruled that Abu-Jamal who…
By Herb Boyd — There is the imminent convergence of two very interesting dates: On Jan. 15th the nation celebrates the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and five days later Donald Trump is inaugurated as America’s 45th president. Given the proximity of these developments, one wonders how Dr. King would feel about Trump’s ascendance and what reservations he would have about the new administration and its impact…
Seven years ago the Institute of the Black World 21st Century launched its first Annual Marcus Garvey Commemorative Meeting and Pan-African Unity Dialogue (PAUD). Last Saturday morning at Local 1199 SEIU more than fifty invitees assembled to pay tribute to what would have been Garvey’s 127th birthday and also to continue the IBW’s mission to bring together individuals representing various Black world diaspora communities for the purpose of dialogue and coordinated actions.
Legendary jazz pianist and composer Cecil Taylor was swindled out of $500,000 by a man who befriended him last year.
A replay on reparations is gathering a bit of traction nowadays thanks to the recent cover story in The Atlantic magazine by Ta-Nehisi Coates and a summary of a reparations conference at Chicago State University…
On the very day his friends and comrades were celebrating the birthday of Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz), Elombe Brath was joining his fellow revolutionary on the other side of our struggle.
I was still reeling from the news that one of Detroit’s most remarkable freedom fighters, General Baker had joined the ancestors when in rapid succession like a machine gun of sorrow word came that the author Sam Greenlee had expired…
Amiri Baraka, like his name, was a blessed prince, and he loomed like a colossus over the Black arts movement, excelling in practically every literary expression—as a poet, playwright, novelist, historian, journalist, and essayist.
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